Girls in Science: another case of the Emperors new clothes?
John Siraj-Blatchford
Faculty of Education,
University of Cambridge
Presentation given at Du och Naturvetenskapen symposium, Umea University, Sweden,
November, 2000.
Introduction
If we are to understand gender equality in the early years of science education it is
important that we accept from the beginning that any distinction that we draw
between science and technology is going to be problematic. You may feel that at
times I stray from one subject to the other but I promise you that I am entirely clear in
my distinction; it is simply that at this stage in science education the children
themselves don’t discriminate between the two, and therefore for many practical and
analytical purposes neither should we.
I must start by explaining my title: You know the story…Some dishonest people
convinced the Emperor that he should buy a suit of the finest thread ever made; a
thread so fine that stupid people wouldn’t even be able to see it. Nobody dared tell
him that he was naked because they didn’t want to seem stupid themselves. For the
purpose of this lecture, the most obvious candidate for the role of emperor might be
considered the scientist; his ‘invisible clothes’ might be considered the white coat
and the technical equipment that surrounds him in the child’s stereotypical image.
But as with many stories there is a twist in this one; the Emperor that I am
considering is Science itself and not the scientist…and the clothes that we dress him
(or her) in, is the science curriculum in our schools. In my version of the story it isn’t
a little boy who sees that he is actually naked…so far it has mostly been women that
have done that. But why do I consider science imperialist? Sandra Harding (1998)
has put forward many of the arguments and the evidence in her book Is Science
Multi-cultural? She argues that western science, at the time of its most formative
development, and since, has been colonialist in the sense that its agenda has been
decided on the grounds of political and commercial gain. We might also note that for
any kind of new scientific development (or technological design for that matter),
there must be some economic investment to free the individuals involved from the
demands of food production or other work more directly associated with satisfying
their basic human needs. This works at an individual, and a societal level; for a
society to have a ‘scientific revolution’ they must have an economic surplus. From
this perspective we can see that western science and technology is founded upon
imperialism, colonial exploitation and the slave trade.
You may feel that I am now stretching the analogy too far but I think (as do many
feminists) that it can also be argued that this kind of cultural imperialism also
extended to the domination of women to exclude the distinctive worldviews of
women. One of the most significant ways in which the ‘emperors clothes’ are
problematic is in terms of the account that they provide of scientific practice. Science
is usually presented as the work of isolated individuals or hero inventors. Yet as
Driver et al (1996) noted:
"Scientific knowledge is the product of a community, not of an individual. Findings
reported by an individual must survive an institutional checking and testing
mechanism, before being accepted as knowledge”
(Driver et al, 1996, p44).
Alienation in Science Education
Many science educators including Hodson (1998) have argued that women and girls
are more open to accounts of science that suggest that it is socially constructed. By
presenting it otherwise we are therefore alienated them. I think we should take this
further and say we are actually alienating everyone; a science education that
presented the facts of its knowledge production would be more democratic and
humanist. In the UK there is now a growing consensus that science education must
support students in developing a better understanding of socially relevant scientific
issues and that they therefore require a better understanding of the processes by
which scientific knowledge is established (ASE, 2000). This has come at a time when
there has been a growing recognition that it is possible to challenge the fundamental
axioms upon which many of our traditional scientific worldviews are founded. As
Harding has put it:
"..instead of science as a monolithic smart system, in which the trick is to learn it and
do it, we get the very different epistemological model of many smart systems, with
their limitations. Its users who have to be smart; they have to learn when to use one
and when to use another."
(Sandra Harding, p18 THES October 11, 1996).
It has been argued that White Western Male Science has been technological,
militaristic mechanistic, and reductionist. Post-colonial/post imperialist science
studies have drawn attention to the alternative sciences developed by different
cultures, it has also supported the arguments that have long been made by feminists
that a feminine science would be very different from a masculine one. It has been
argued that a feminist science would except greater complexity, that it would be less
reductionist, more holistic and ecological. Ironically it could be that we are now in a
better position to introduce this kind of curriculum than we ever have been for
technological reasons. The following quotation is included in the latest UK National
Curriculum compendium for primary schools:
"With scientific method, we took things apart to see how they worked. Now with
computers we can put things back together to see how they work, by modelling
complex, interrelated processes, even life itself. This is a new age of discovery, and
ICT is the gateway”.
Douglas Adams cited in DfEE 1999 p97
The scientific knowledge that has been established has predominantly reflected the
interests of a white, male minority. It has been their concerns and perspectives that
have determined the body of knowledge that we call science. What this has meant in
practice is that, to paraphrase Harding; for girls and the majority of the world
population, the science that is conducted in our universities and taught in our schools
has been mostly alien to them, and they are alienated by it. Apart from anything else,
it has had more to do with exploiting resources than with saving them for our
children. Alienation is therefore one aspect of the problem that we need to address,
but an adequate model must also provide an account that looks at achievement,
opportunity and the inclination to learn science as well.
In terms of achievement we know that the gender gap in participation and success in
science is narrowing. But the majority of boys and girls who show capability in the
subject leave secondary/high schools without developing an academic self-image
that includes science. Many have also lost confidence in their own capabilities
particularly with regard to the physical sciences. And politicians in recent years have
become increasingly concerned about the alienation of the general public when it
comes to science…we now have programmes that address the problem of the
‘Public Understanding of Science’ directly.
It might be argued that the alienation of girls is simply a response to wider social
expectations. Examination performance and associated research has shown that
girls are as capable and are often more capable than boys; but they are
disproportionately failing to pursue the subjects at the higher levels. We know that
even from the age of five, both girls and boys have definite views about what
constitutes "men's work" and "women's work". Broader social-cultural changes are
therefore needed to alter the norms and expectations for males and females in
science, and early educators cannot be expected to bring about wholesale social
change. But they have long excepted the role of working closely with parents to help
them support their child ‘as their first teacher’ and this provides an important context
for making a contribution.
Of course most professional scientists would object to what I have been saying; they
would argue that the science that we have established is vastly superior in every way
to the ‘primitive’ ideas of other cultures. They would also say that the arguments of
green, post-colonial and feminist science are inferior to their own. In his germinal text
on Orientalism, Edward Said (1994) has referred to the 'impressive circularity' of
British self identification (of course it isn’t just British!) and this is simply another
example of it:
"...we are dominant because we have the power (industrial, technological, military,
moral), and they don't, because of which they are not dominant; they are inferior, we
are superior...and so on and on."
(Said, 1994, p127)
The ethnic minority (white western male) identity has been constructed in opposition
to western and non-western female ‘others’ who have been treated as:
“... ‘primitive’: child-like both in the sense of being at a stage of development that ‘the
West’ had already passed through and as indicative of a state requiring tutelage and
governance.”
(Fabian, cited in Rattansi, 1994 p36)
And this also says something about the way in which many western societies have
come to view the child...
The hidden curriculum of gender in science
Research in the UK suggests that the decline in girls’ interest in science begins at
the stages of puberty, when the girls' sense of self, of who they are and how others
see them, becomes developmentally salient. Girls are not interested in the physical
sciences and technology because it is related to un-feminine social roles. Research
indicates that girls resist science because it isn't ‘feminine’ and it also shows that
they consistently underestimate their ability to achieve good grades in math and
science. They also lack self-confidence, and they have few positive role models to
encourage them to overcome their self-doubt. Where these role models are available
the evidence is that girls do well.
But none of this seems especially relevant to the early years; girls seem to be very
well motivated at that stage. But although societal expectations about gender and
other social characteristics have begun to change, or at least to be questioned,
throughout society, the prevailing view of gender-appropriate achievement in schools
often constitutes a ‘hidden curriculum’ that supports gender-biased behaviour - and
this even seems to be the case in the early years.
Learning styles and teaching methods
As previously suggested the fact that science is portrayed as a solitary, rather than a
social/collaborative occupation is significant here. Murphy and Gipps (1996) edited
contribution to the debate on pedagogy for girls has also suggested that we need to
do more to provide teachers with a wider range of pedagogic strategies to account
for the diversity of pupils learning styles. But this doesn’t mean providing girls
science for girls and boys science for boys: When it comes to learning styles we
always need to start where the child is at; and then to encourage them to develop
new learning strategies that will be useful to them for different purposes, and in
different contexts, in the future.
A number of studies have also documented the fact that boys, particularly as they
get older, tend to dominate the teacher’s time. This is closely related to concerns
about the ‘impact’ that pupils have on teachers and this has implications for teachers
sustaining (or reifying) their expectations of pupils, and for the provision of formative
assessment. The evidence of this kind of bias is often startling to male and female
teachers. Studies have also shown that even very young boys harass girls (and
sometimes female teachers) in science and technological contexts. These incidents
often involve conflicts over resources where boys have learnt, for example, that:
“Girls don’t do bricks? (Epstein, 1995).
Epstein’s (1995) study of children playing with bricks showed girls building elaborate
constructions that were subsequently used in their more gendered play with
princesses and ponies. This illustrated two things: firstly, and this supports Valerie
Walkerdine (1987) and Bronwyn Davies (1989) evidence and arguments; that
children are active agents in making their own meanings and in (re)constructing
sexism; secondly, that certain kinds of work can, to a more or less limited degree,
shift children's positionings within sexist and heterosexist discourse. Epstein
introduced girl’s only time in using the bricks in her infant classroom. In this particular
case, the girls' ability to challenge (both for themselves and for the boys) gendered
stereotypes was made possible precisely because they were able to occupy
contradictory positions at the same time, playing with the boys' toys while taking up
feminine subject positions.
Stereotyped images are often shown in text and illustrations of scientific toys and
construction sets etc. and this is a real problem. Bur as far as the UK educational
publishers are concerned, the battle to remove inappropriate stereotypes of this sort
has largely been won - although perhaps too many have responded by avoiding
children’s images altogether and introducing cartoons! The habit of giving male
teachers responsibility for the science and technology curriculum remains common
and this is especially problematic in terms of role modelling.
Where schools are faced with new publications that include innapropriate role
models they may sometimes be used to good effect. I remember a new book being
sent as part of a reading scheme to a school I worked in some years ago. It was
entitled ‘The Man Who Made Machines’. In most schools with an equal opportunities
policy the book would simply have been removed from the shelf or sent back to the
publisher. In the school that I was working in, the headteacher introduced the text
and the problem of stereotypes to a class of 9-year-olds instead. They studied the
gendered language of the text, and reproduced the book in its entirety on their
classroom computer, fully illustrating it as the ‘The Women Who Made Machines’.
This was put into the reading scheme alongside the Man Who Made Machines.
Inevitably the children, and the parents, who were given the books together asked
why they were given two, and this provided a context for discussing the problem, and
for discussing how they could do more to improve the situation.
Equality of opportunity and anti-sexist science education
For some years the equality of opportunity perspective in early years science has
tended to emphasise access to the science curriculum, it has suggested ways of
challenging stereotypes, of providing 'positive images', and of trying to change the
'hidden curriculum'. What was considered important was that girls had an equal
opportunity to do science. They were given the resources (e.g. the water and sand
play resources) to discover scientific phenomenon, but if they chose to play with
these resources in a different way from the boys that wasn't necessarily seen as a
problem. They could e.g. wash their doll in the water instead of trying to pour water
into different containers, or trying out different materials to see if they floated or
sank, or seeing how colours mixed in it etc. The trouble is that this policy doesn’t go
far enough. While equal opportunities policies are non-sexist they aren’t necessarily
anti-sexist; they don’t concern themselves enough with equality of outcomes.
There is an even more fundamental problem with the ‘discovery’ perspective that this
approach to providing children with learning resources assumes. It has often been
applied to overstate what can be achieved in terms of science though play. Science
isn’t just about making observations about things, it is about making quite specific
observations…and it isn’t just about observing either it is also about explaining. To
take a concrete example, it is often assumed that children will learn about structures
and mechanisms through making things. In the UK this typically means playing with
bricks and construction kits. But they are provided as a free-play option and even
when some children (especially girls) are encouraged to play with them they may not
stay very long or use them in the ways expected. But Carol Brown (1993), in her
collaborative action research project with construction kits, has shown that while
there is already a large gap in achievement between boys and girls on entry to
formal education, a programme of structured access can be employed to reduce the
capability gap. She shows that, given proper instruction, that is, given an effective
science and technology education in the early years, girls' underachievement in this
area may be eliminated entirely. An anti-sexism perspective in early year’s science
emphasises the need to address this sort of outcome; providing girls with whatever
resources they required to be successful. At times this may mean providing
advocacy or even girl only groups. It can also mean providing for the specific antisexist education of boys.
There is now a consensus in the UK that the quantity of scientific ‘facts’ that we
attempt to teach is too great, and that more should be done to teach children about
the nature of science and about the processes of scientific knowledge construction.
An anti-sexist science education might therefore involve making a particular
selection from the established scientific content as well as emphasising its
social/collaborative nature. For the early years we also need a play based curriculum
that takes us beyond the assumptions of ‘discovery’. Play is a ‘leading activity’
(Leontiev, 1981, Oerter, 1993), and as van Oers (1999) has suggested, when
children consciously reflect upon the relationship between their ‘pretend’ signs and
‘real’ meanings they are engaged in a form of semiotic activity that will provide a
valuable precursor to new learning activities (p278):
“…learning activity must be fostered as a new special form of play activity. As a new
quality emerging from play activity, it can be argued that learning activity has to be
conceived as a language game in which negotiation about meanings in a community
of learners is the basic strategy for the acquisition of knowledge and abilities”. (van
Oers 1999, p273 authors own emphasis)
From this theoretical standpoint I want to argue that we should be providing
opportunities for children to play at being scientists. As I have already argued
science is a game with rules and children are already playing at being Mummies,
Daddies, Firemen and even Dentists! Preschool suppliers produce ‘dressing-up’
clothers to promote this kind of play and it’s about time children played at being
scientists too. I think we can afford to exploit the stereotype a bit here (as long as it
isn’t gendered) and provide play resources such as big plastic test tubes, test tube
holders, burettes, coloured water, weather observation equipment, electrical sensors
etc., and encourage children to play with them. For some practitioners even this will
seem to prescriptive, but as Vygotsky argued:
“In one sense a child at play is free to determine his own actions. But in another
sense this is an illusory freedom, for his actions are in fact subordinated to the
meanings of things and he acts accordingly”
(Vygotsky,1978, p103)
‘The child as scientist’
In the past some writers have fallen into the trap of talking of the child ‘as a natural
scientist’ (Bentley & Watts, 1994) because of their natural inclination to
‘spontaneously wonder’ (Donaldson, 1992) about things. Driver addressed this
directly in the Pupil as Scientist and as Driver (1985) went on to suggest, we now
know that some of these beliefs differ markedly from accepted scientific knowledge
and that they may be difficult to change. But the major difference between the
scientific knowledge that every individual child builds up as an infant and the science
constructed by professional scientists is related to the rigour with which every new
idea is tested and to the benefits of collaboration and communication.
‘Established’ scientific knowledge is the product of a collective historical enterprise.
When we refer to science as a discipline - we are making reference to a set of rules:
For a child (or for anyone else) to think ‘scientifically’ means to obey these rules and
to; keep an open mind; to respect yet always to critically evaluate evidence; and; to
participate in a community that encourages the free exchange of information, critical
peer review and testing.
In the early years in particular we must be vigilant in distinguishing between science
and scientific development and cognition and cognitive development - which however
analogous is actually quite different. It is important to remember that constructivism
is a learning theory developed in opposition to inductivism; the idea that we simply
absorb new understandings directly from the environment. And the crucial word here
is ‘understandings’, Piaget actually said that empirical knowledge might be acquired
simply through observation, but that the learning of explanatory rules and concepts
relies upon the self-conscious co-ordination of the observed with existing cognitive
structures of meaning.
Learning science is not simply knowing about ‘natural phenomenon’. It provides a set
of socio-historically established and agreed logico-mathematical constructions that
explain these phenomenon. From the constructivist perspective; as an observation is
recognised as in some way inconsistent with a cognitive structure or schema, that
schema may consequently be reorganised to accommodate it. This elaborated
structure of meaning may then, in turn, be applied to explain the observation, which
is itself, transformed in the process. The whole process of learning is a mechanism
of ‘equilibration’ and it is disequilibrium, 'dissonance' or disturbance that provides the
motor for encouraging the process. But the fuel of that motor is the child’s interest,
and their motivations witch may be extrinsic or implicit to the activity. DeVries (1997)
has drawn special attention to this aspect of Piagetian thinking.
What ‘discovery learning’ came to mean, whether it was balancing copper pennies
on a balance in a secondary Physics class to teach children the law of moments or
setting up a water tank for children to play with and discover why things floated and
sunk in a nursery was nonsense. It didn’t work because it made all kinds of
assumptions about children’s prior knowledge and understanding and just as
significantly about their motivations and interest. We are never passive in perception:
We can look at things scientifically, or critically, or with appreciation, we can also
look at things poetically... and we can view things with indifference or with a view to
remembering them, promoting or even changing them and as Donaldson has
suggested:
“…theoretical preconceptions and reported observations are by no means
independent of one another. Theories – or, indeed, beliefs not conscious enough to
be called theories – guide the nature of the observations; and the guiding
assumptions are often not recognised as being open to doubt.”
(Donaldson , p161 1992)
In my own study of 5 year olds playing with construction kits (Siraj-Blatchford, J & I,
1998), even with the very modest scientific conceptions that were involved,
‘instruction’ was far more influential than ‘discovery’ - although the kind of instruction
that was observed included hidden learning processes such as the observation of
peers. Free access to sand and water play are very popular in the UK, they can
undoubtedly be influential but all the evidence suggests that the play involved is as
often as not repetitive, irrelevant and unproductive. For this sort of play to be
educational in terms of science some form of instruction (e.g. demonstration,
modelling etc.) is usually needed, and clear objectives need to be defined.
From the simplistic notions of individual cognitive elaboration through ‘discovery’ we
have increasingly come to see child development in socio-cultural terms as a
‘construction zone’ involving the educator and not just the child.
How do we provide positive role models?
One of the biggest problems that we have faced in British science early years
science education has been the educators concern that they themselves don’t have
the prior knowledge that is needed to either answer children’s questions, or to teach
them science. Hodson (1998) has written about the need for teachers to accept that
providing the ‘correct answer’, the established scientific view, isn’t always a practical
option. It certainly isn’t something we should assume we are doing at any stage.
Anne Edwards and Peter Knight (1994) make the point even more strongly in the
case of Early Years education by saying we should only ever be trying to move
children from their initial limited conceptions to ‘less misconceived’ ideas. This may
be obvious in the case of learning about physical concepts such as floating and
sinking: While a recognition of ‘upthrust’ may represent a necessary prerequisite to
learning, any adequate understanding of the science must involve the concept of
Density. And this is only understood when children are able to consider the effects of
comparative changes in volume and mass (the intellectual equivalent of rubbing your
stomach and tapping your head at the same time).
This is a difficult idea for many early years educators and provides another reason
why we should quite clearly differentiate between science education that focuses on
established conceptual knowledge (In the UK national curriculum this currently starts
at KS2 with 6 year olds) and an ‘Emergent science education’ that focuses on the
development of emergent conceptions of the nature of science and the development
of positive dispositions.
Conclusions: What is Emergent Science?
An emergent curriculum is a curriculum responsive to children’s needs as individuals,
it accepts diversity of experience, interests and development. An emergent
curriculum is also a curriculum that respects the power and importance of play, and
supports children in becoming more accomplished players - good at choosing,
constructing and co-constructing their own learning. Dweck and Leggett (1988) have
shown that young children evaluate their achievements in term of learning products
or performances. Children who become oriented towards learning goals are found to
be masterful in the face of difficulties whereas those orientated towards performance
tend towards learnt helplessness. Children who have learnt to seek process goals
are more robust (masterful) in the face of failure whereas those who fail in seeking
product goals tend towards ‘learnt helplessness’. Learning goal children believe they
can improve their performance, whereas performance goal children see their
capabilities as fixed and immutable. Within a learning goal, children displayed the
mastery-orientated pattern regardless of confidence level whereas within a
performance goal, children with low confidence were susceptible to helplessness.
Emergent Science is like emergent literacy. Teachers who teach emergent literacy
encourage ‘mark making’ as a natural prelude to writing. In emergent science we
should encourage ‘explorations’ and support the child in sustaining them over time.
Teachers who teach emergent literacy read a range of different kinds of text to
children. In emergent science we should introduce the children to ‘new
phenomenon’. We should provide them with the essential early experiences that they
must have if they are to go on to understand scientific explanations later. These early
experiences will include playing with a range of different materials (sand/water/air
etc.). They will also include drawing children’s attention to the workings of their own
body and the world around them. Imagine how difficult it would be to understand
atmospheric pressure if you have never gained confidence in conceiving of air as a
substance! But we can encourage 'air play' in the nursery, pouring it upside down in
water, playing with bubbles and balloons and inner tubes, watching the wind and
catching it in kites and sails. Teachers who teach emergent literacy provide positive
role models by showing children the value they place in their own use of print. In
emergent science we can do the same by talking about science and involving
children in our own collaborative scientific investigations. We can tell the children
many of the stories of scientific discovery. In doing so we will encourage children to
develop an emergent awareness of the nature and value of the subject as well as
positive dispositions towards the science education that they will experience in the
future.
Many of those promoting emergent literacy see parent and teacher ‘modelling’, that
is teachers and parents providing good role models - to be the most important factor
in developing children’s capability. They therefore encourage parents to read to their
children and ensure that the children see them reading for their own purposes. This
is backed up by numerous large scale research projects that show that the single
most influential factor in determining children’s future academic success in the early
years is parents reading to children and taking them to the library regularly (Sylva et
al, 2000). This in turn is related to social class and other factors - but the primary
determinant seems to be the parent’s behaviour; change that and it will compensate
for social class differences in academic achievement! So the real challenge is to
provide children will strong models of science so that they develop positive attitudes
and beliefs about the importance of the subject, that is what influences their
motivation to engage in it.
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